Remember this when you get an urge to say that America and Western society is oppressive, and when you decide that Islam is a peaceful religion.

I think you are confusing a political system with a religion.

Saudi Arabia is a country that leverages their religion to implement a very conservative and authoritarian society.

Islam is a religion.

Remember, Christianity has been used throughout history as an excuse to kill, maim, rape, and torture millions of people too. Pretending that Islam is unique in the barbarism that is executed in its name is fuzzy logic at best.

Rob,
I read your blog long before I ever signed up for an account (where I was promptly taught that I wasn't smart enough to post here). '97 was so long ago. Thanks for everything. I hope you find happiness in your next opportunity.

Which is exactly why I'm sticking with Netflix regardless of how pissed I am about a 60% price increase this year. With our bought/sold politicians, the only way we are going to get any semblance of net neutrality is if the competing companies that want to provide video/data services become strong enough to take on the ISPs in Washington.
Of course, the biggest problem my strategy has is that nothing prevents Netflix from working a deal with Time Warner to not have their streaming count against the cap.

Bingo, and furthermore some Blu Rays have kittens when you don't give them access to the internet.
I had to physically unplug my player from its switch because Tron: Legacy placed a large box in the center of my screen stating that Tron wanted access to the internet and refused to accept that I had a connection and didn't want to give it access. Stupid thing would actually play the movie with this box covering 1/3 of the screen.
BD Live seems to increase load times and allows "sneaky" movie studios to track my viewing habits without giving me any real value.

I have no problem with the FBI gathering evidence in an attempt to prove guilt. What I have a problem with is gps tracking, wiretapping phones, reading emails, etc, without showing probable cause and getting a warrant from a Judge.

Have you ever been to Circ de Soleil?
One of the most impressive elements about their performances is the live music. Sure they have clowns and trapize artist and stuff, but the music is always stunning and powerful. So much so that every time I think about Circ, I think of the music. The live music adds a certain element that a synthesizer never can.
I'm no fan of broadway, but I look at this artistic forms I appreciate.

I believe you are being disingenuous here. All you have to do is play with a windows mobile phone for 10 minutes to understand how much multi-tasking can affect the customer's experience. Several of my friends have them and are constantly complaining about how unresponsive and slow they are.

Part of the problem is obviously Windows Mobile, but you have to keep in mind that these are devices are using processors that are much weaker than what you find in today's computer/notebook. I don't doubt that Apple is working on multi-tasking for the iPhone/iPad, but until they implement it in such a way that it doesn't bog down the device and can provide an easy to use method for killing things running in the background - I don't want it.

I work in Telco, and have yet to see a modern device that provides both of those, so No thank you, I'll stick with my single tasking iPhone.

Exactly, and any MBA program worth its salt talks about the MBA being a "general management degree" and attempts to expose its students to a number of different disciplines so that they learn to adapt to them and pick up new ones.
Good MBA programs teach students an approach to learning and problem solving, not 2 semesters of accounting, 1 of finance, 2 of marketing, 1 of OB, etc.

As someone that has moved from software engineering out into management, I certainly understand your points and from the outside they make a lot of sense. However, I disagree.

As many in the thread have said, the majority of software engineering is contemplating a problem and coming up with workable solution. I remember years ago when tasked with replacing a complex CORBA interface with web services, I spent 8 weeks planning, pondering, and scratching on ether-paper, and 4 on coding and unit test. Because I had done all my planning and designing up front, the actual coding went quickly and I ran into almost no issues. I was done well ahead of schedule and as of several years later when I left the firm, there had been no problems. However, I bet that for those first eight weeks, I sure looked like I was doing jack.

The challenge for most non-software engineers is that what SE's do is so different and unique. We can understand what a mechanical engineer does because most of us have opened the hood of our car and looked at the complexities of the engine. We can grasp at what nuclear engineers do because we've seen large cities and huge ships powered by their works, not to mention read about the probes we've sent to other planets powered by them. We can comprehend what Industrial Engineers do because..uhh..well maybe nobody understands that (joking...joking...).

Software Engineering is so foreign to what other individuals do that it is a mystery. It is part logic and process modeling, part math, and often requires a firm understanding of science and physics. Some tasks require an understanding of human psychology. Coding is one of the steps int the software engineering process, not the only one. It is unfortunate that it is also the only step people seem to attribute to the engineer. Software Engineering is much closer to art than production line work sticking slot A into tab B. And like artists, many of software engineerings practitioners tend to be a bit egotistical, anti-social and well..pricks.

Having said that, if the OP's description is accurate, there is definitely something wrong in his new organization and I agree he should begin to look elsewhere. Either his fellows are indeed lazy or management is setting unrealistic expectations.

I'm pretty surprised by this as well. A decade ago (when I was in school) my internships were $16, $18 and then $20 an hour.
The "staffing company" may be part of your challenge - they are probably taking a cut and the major notebook manu doesn't realize it.
Have you looked for an internship through your school? That was where I found all of mine.

Having bought the DLC and run the quest - I tend to agree with you. The $5 quest that is pushed on you (Warden's Keep) results in getting your own personal castle that you can store stuff in and several vendors to sell you stuff. I'm ~12-ish hours into the game and haven't found an alternative place to store extra loot.
This content is so well integrated into the game, that had it not been for the PAX pair, I wouldn't have realized that it was an extra add on. The other available DLC is so obviously tacked on that it is nearly painful (you get a stone golem...for $15).
I had picked up the Warden's keep DLC while concentrating very hard on my last conference call on the day the game was released and staring intently at the Dragon Age start screen. *Cough*

More than that, their website also says "your software purchase" repeatedly.
If they are actually selling a license, they should be liable for misrepresentation because nowhere does it affirm that the user is only buying a license (well, up through the part where you have to enter a credit card number - i don't actually want their software).